It is a long way from the little village of La Barre, France, where Captain Jean-Luc Picard was born, to the cities and waterways of Bordeaux. They are very close, however, at warp speed.
Most of my life has been lived at that speed.
How often have I heard myself say “I can fit you in for five or ten minutes between 2:00 and 2:10,” or “can we talk at 10pm my time after my two other Zoom meetings?” It seems so exciting, yet it is often simply a blur.
At the locks. Photo by Chris Christopher.
But this month I had the chance to experience life at 5mph. Literally. That is the top speed on the Canal latéral à la Garonne, a nineteenth-century waterway that ambles alongside first the right, then the left bank of the Garonne river. In the process it connects the Mediterranean, via Narbonne and Toulouse, with the Atlantic at Bordeaux.
And so we floated along, with the most charming and bucolic scenery on every side, at an escargot’s pace. French people out for a promenade literally walked past us on the tow path; runners left us in the dust. Two men in a scull blew by and they were just having a leisurely morning workout.
My somewhat unusual family —my son Colin, daughter Sloan and her husband Josh; along with their mother, my former wife, Susan, and her husband, Norm—took me on a week-long vacation, a float as it were, through lush and quiet wine country bisecting southern France. Top speed: 5 mph, maybe less. We covered a whopping 150 kilometers (roughly 100 miles for the Americans in the crowd) of French countryside in seven days. We could have driven that far in just over an hour.
Every so often we stopped to go through a lock, raising or lowering the boat some three to eight feet, and that slowed us to about eight feet in half an hour. Toulouse stands nearly 150 meters (≈500 ft) above the Mediterranean while Bordeaux sits at sea level, and fifty-three sets of locks are required, along the Canal de Garonne system, to even this out. Anyone in a hurry would be wise to walk: they will arrive long before we did.
At each successive lock we had to carefully position Le Boat—yes, that is what we called it—then sit back, wait, drink a little wine, and wait some more.
Unmooring Le Boat. Photo by Chris Christopher
Life is different at such a speed. As the trip unfolded, I began to reflect on how rarely I’ve allowed myself to move at such a slow pace. Each instance, like this one, involved either walking or drifting along on slow-moving water. Add it all up, and from the age of 26, I have spent perhaps forty days of my life moving at a snail’s pace. The rest of the time has been pretty much pedal to the metal. Do the math: that is a lot more fast than slow.
On our tour we passed a land that still fosters mostly agrarian lives, and that moves at an eons-old pace. The sun comes up and people eat a little. They tend to their lands or their vines, to their flocks or their little businesses. And then the sun sets and they go to bed.
Well, that’s not all. It being France, we saw vast vinyards with grapes ripening on the vine—and plenty in bottle form as well. Near as I could tell, grapes don’t grow any faster today than they did two-thousand years ago, when the Romans were making wine from them in these same fields. In our visits with people tending the vineyards, and the vintners making wine from them, they had a pastoral rhythm of life, a pace matching that of the grapes. We also passed many hayfields and had the simple luxury of watching the grass grow.
Hay bales in France. Photo by Pascal Bernardon
What we also got, that we’d never have had at warp speed, was time together. Time to just be in relationship. Mostly we just had fun, but there were also moments when we seriously reflected on our lives together. We had time to discuss things that really mattered and time to give thoughtful answers.
The trip was, in part, to celebrate my seventieth birthday and Sloan felt relaxed enough to ask what I was planning to do with the rest of my life. That does not come up at warp speed. It helped us bond as a family and we realized we wanted to build some slow-speed into our future, one where we’re all in regular relationship with one another. Assuming my kids have kids of their own, they made clear they want the grandparents to be around, to help and to be a part of their childrens’ lives. That was a true gift at a mere five miles per hour.
Vinyards along the Garonne canal. Photo by Chris Christopher.
This week I am back to “normal” life. I will spend nearly twenty-four hours on airplanes, at high speed and high altitude, traveling close to twelve-thousand miles.
I have returned to moving at what now seems the frantic pace of the California freeways, making handsfree calls at speed instead of gently nudging into a water lock and waiting for a boat to slowly rise or fall. And when I get home, late at night, I’ll pull the cork of a fine California Merlot… but don’t call it that if you meet someone from Bordeaux.
“That is a Cabernet Franc, Monsieur,” he will say and then, shaking his head, will mutter, “These Américains and their ‘Sideways’. Merlot? Merde!”
After such a trip, with such people and at such a pace, I am forced to ask: can I really be in meaningful relationships at warp? It worked for Jean-Luc, but for me? Non, not so much. What am I missing in my other relationships, at my regular life speed? How much can I really care about someone while traveling faster than light?
As we gear up for our upcoming The Art of Masculinity, I must find a way to slow my relationship speed to more humane levels, else will the men I talk to really know I care?
Toulouse, France, the southeastern terminus of the
Canal de Garonne. Photo by Matteo Cathelin / Unsplash
I don’t yet know how I’ll accomplish this, but I’ve returned home with a commitment to live the human parts of my life at human speeds. In the end, no one will care how many frequent flier miles I earned, particularly if I’m so busy rushing that I die with them unused.
I believe a literal change of pace will make a difference. I invite you to join me in this because I strongly suspect you’re traveling faster than light also. If so, let’s all slow down, at least when we’re with our families and our friends. Perhaps, if we slow down, we’ll make time to be slow with those we love. Up to now I have not, not until last week on Le Boat, with Colin, and with Sloan. With Josh and with Susan, and with Norm. With the French men and women walking by faster than our little ship could drift.
Birthday table on Le Boat. Photo by Chris Christopher.
I may be seventy now but I’m not giving up on my regular life. I will keep flying and driving at my normal high speeds. But I plan to live my relationships, the ones with those I cherish, no faster than 5mph. And sorry, Jean-Luc, but I’ll do it with a glass of Merlot.
Engage!
About the Author
Chris Christopher is the sitting president of Mentor, Discover, Inspire (MDI), an international non-profit men’s organization dedicated to mentoring men to live with excellence, hence to become better husbands, fathers and leaders. Christopher earned a bachelor’s in economics and political science from Northwestern University and a law degree and MBA from the University of Virginia. He is a partner at Darden Brothers, a private equity firm he co-founded in 1995. It is, among other things, the largest independent battery distributor in Canada.
Christopher lives in San Diego, California, and has two adult children.
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